Professor Andrew Steckl, from the University of Cincinnati

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Article Summary

E-ink's benefits over other forms of display are obvious: you don't have to backlight it if you don't want to, so it's very easy on the eye and also on a device's battery. You can effectively use it to produce an electronic screen that's as pleasant to look at as a printed piece of paper. And the technology seems set to take another leap forward with the announcement that University of Cincinnati researchers have developed an e-ink technology that's quick enough to competently display full color video – but so cheap that it can be completely disposable. How? Well, instead of using glass or flexible plastic as the basic substrate layer, they're using paper – and getting excellent results. So you could end up with single-page disposable electronic newspapers and magazines that use a tiny fraction of the paper their printed counterparts require. Clever stuff!